David Frum is waging a struggle to reclaim the Republican Party on his web site NewMajority.com. One of his articles is entitled "No Wonder People Hate Us." It's about how the lunatic fringe is destroying the Republican Party. The piece focuses on a right wing, open mouth radio host named Mark Levin who really does abuse anyone not of his own ilk.
Frum provided a transcript of an excerpt in which Levin horribly castigated a woman caller, questioning why her husband didn't just put a gun to his temple. Frum questioned what people like Levin must be doing to any decent Americans:
Imagine some commuter - a nonpolitical person, a family man or woman, a taxpayer and billpayer - who happens to flip the dial on the radio on the way home and hears that exchange. What would such a person think? Wouldn't it be something like, "I dont know what's wrong with that horrible man, but I do know this: whatever side he's on, any decent person would have to be on the opposite"?
I didn't know anything about Mark Levin but this controversy led me to seek him out on YouTube. Here's a clip of this guy tearing into his fellow right winger, Bill O'Reilly, that captures the state of right wing talk radio in the United States today:
I don't have any sympathy for Frum or his Republicans. If you choose to sleep with dogs, don't complain when you get fleas. The Republicans courted these people when that served their purposes just as they courted Christian fundamentalists. The Republicans gave them the necessary degree of credibility and support required for them to flourish. The Republicans provided the rotten fruit needed for this bacteria to grow. They cut their own throats. Now they're left with a party of churls and Quasimodos, a party of hacks and hucksters, names like Boehner, Imhofe and Palin. It was this whole strata of mud dumb bigots and fearstruck fantasists to which Karl Rove looked to cement his permanent Republican majority. Rove never grasped that the key to his success could also be the key to the indefinite collapse of his party and the abandonment of its grotesque movement.
The Republican Party deserves to be led into the desert by the likes of Levin and Savage, Hannity and Limbaugh. There's still a good bit of rotting left to do before they're ready to rebuild, before they can be restored to the company of decent people.
p.s. What's with O'Reilly? If you listened to that clip he sounded perfectly reasonable. Haven't we seen this before on prime time wrestling? The bad guy who needs to revive his tired brand and so instantly switches sides?
Showing posts with label David Frum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Frum. Show all posts
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Frum Pokes Bristol
I'm no great fan of David Frum but some of his missives during the post-apocalyptic Repug era have been pretty good. Today Frum takes a poke at Bristol Palin, what she means to hardcore Republicans and why they need to get out of this rut. From the National Toast:
Many conservatives carry in their heads a mental image of American society that’s a generation out of date. They imagine the existence of a huge class of socially conservative downscale voters, ready to vote Republican because of abortion and gay marriage.
The story of Bristol Palin should help puncture this illusion.
...Of children born to white women with a college degree, only 8% were born out of wedlock. But of children born to white women who did not finish college, 28% were born outside of marriage. Of children born to white women who stopped their education after high school, 42.1% were out of wedlock. And of births to white women like Bristol Palin, who have not completed high school, almost 61% were out of wedlock.
It may still be true ...that there remain many socially conservative voters who are “white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year.” But the key fact about those voters is tucked into the middle of that sequence of descriptors: “middle-aged and seniors.” Younger white downscale voters are a very different story.
It is marriage that creates culturally conservative voters – and young downscale Americans are not getting married. When they do marry, they do not stay married: While divorce rates among the college educated have declined sharply since the 1970s, divorce rates among high school graduates remain ominously high.
The socially conservative downscale voter is increasingly becoming a mirage – and a Republican politics based on that mirage will only lead us deeper into the desert.
One thing that Frum overlooks is those states which have the highest rates of education and marital stability and the lowest rates of unwed teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease - are Blue States. They vote solidly Democrat, they always have.
Frum's Republicans would have a better chance if they could get the people of the Slave States to begin acting more like the people of the Blue States but that isn't going to happen. They're going to remain America's cesspit of poverty, ignorance and bigotry.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/13/david-frum-bristol-palin-and-the-conservative-mirage.aspx
Many conservatives carry in their heads a mental image of American society that’s a generation out of date. They imagine the existence of a huge class of socially conservative downscale voters, ready to vote Republican because of abortion and gay marriage.
The story of Bristol Palin should help puncture this illusion.
...Of children born to white women with a college degree, only 8% were born out of wedlock. But of children born to white women who did not finish college, 28% were born outside of marriage. Of children born to white women who stopped their education after high school, 42.1% were out of wedlock. And of births to white women like Bristol Palin, who have not completed high school, almost 61% were out of wedlock.
It may still be true ...that there remain many socially conservative voters who are “white, working- and middle-class, Catholic, small-town, rural, unionized, middle-age and seniors, and surviving on less than $50,000 a year.” But the key fact about those voters is tucked into the middle of that sequence of descriptors: “middle-aged and seniors.” Younger white downscale voters are a very different story.
It is marriage that creates culturally conservative voters – and young downscale Americans are not getting married. When they do marry, they do not stay married: While divorce rates among the college educated have declined sharply since the 1970s, divorce rates among high school graduates remain ominously high.
The socially conservative downscale voter is increasingly becoming a mirage – and a Republican politics based on that mirage will only lead us deeper into the desert.
One thing that Frum overlooks is those states which have the highest rates of education and marital stability and the lowest rates of unwed teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease - are Blue States. They vote solidly Democrat, they always have.
Frum's Republicans would have a better chance if they could get the people of the Slave States to begin acting more like the people of the Blue States but that isn't going to happen. They're going to remain America's cesspit of poverty, ignorance and bigotry.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/13/david-frum-bristol-palin-and-the-conservative-mirage.aspx
Sunday, October 26, 2008
David Frum Urges Republicans to Throw In the Towel on McCain
Republican pundit David Frum is urging fellow Repugs to shift their efforts, and their money, from what he considers an already lost presidential campaign and use them instead to fight a rearguard Congressional defence.
David, son of Barbara, wrote in the Washington Post, that McCain, "is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him."
"The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.
"I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it's too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP.
McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."
Frum argues that Republicans should shift "every available dollar" to the senatorial campaign. For some reason he can't bring himself to say those dollars ought to be shifted from the presidential campaign. He also argues that Republicans should hammer home the message that the Dems are probably going to take the White House and voters can't take the risk of also handing congress to a bunch of liberals.
David, son of Barbara, wrote in the Washington Post, that McCain, "is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him."
"The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won.
"I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it's too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP.
McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."
Frum argues that Republicans should shift "every available dollar" to the senatorial campaign. For some reason he can't bring himself to say those dollars ought to be shifted from the presidential campaign. He also argues that Republicans should hammer home the message that the Dems are probably going to take the White House and voters can't take the risk of also handing congress to a bunch of liberals.
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